Headline above: "US Drone War in Afghanistan: Photos Show the Real Victims of the Silent Killers"

"Remotely controlled drones are seen as the wonder weapon in the anti-terror fight. For years, Washington has used the high-tech weapons in west Pakistan, but the suffering of the civilians is mostly hidden. Now a photographer's pictures show the entire extent of the horror. By Hasnain Kasim, Islamabad."

As it reads - the headline seems to imply the following: The real victims (and therefore the real targets) of drone strikes are innocent civilians, not the violent jihadists hell-bent on murdering anyone who does not share their worldview.

If there is any doubt amongst our German journalist friends about the kind of people the US is targeting - watch them brutally murdering sixteen Pakistani policemen here. The good, morally-superior journalists at SPIEGEL ONLINE who go to bed peacefully each night protected by American troops should have no doubt that they and their loved ones would end the same way should those the US is really targeting have the chance to effect their agenda.

This latest lead article displays the same sort of muddled logic that allowed SPIEGEL ONLINE and other like-minded media to imply earlier that the inmates at Guantanamo (for the most part) were just innocent Afghani vegetable gardeners or foreign honor students (not determined Islamic Fascists out to create a global caliphate) who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In addition - this story is essentially taking the Pakistani photographer's word for it that his photos are all actual depictions of civilian casualties. That's not to say that there have not been civilian casualties - but how many civilians have been victimized because militants chose to use them as human shields or their villages as bases of operations? Do they not at least share in the responsibility for the consequences?

And what about the victims of the Islamic militants? Perhaps SPIEGEL ONLINE would be so balanced as to run a front page post on photos of those victims. Perhaps that would be a bit too messy and not properly directed at the world's true enemy - the United States...